I went to business school, and I went straight from that to a nine-year career at Microsoft. Eventually, I ran a big chunk of the consumer products division for Microsoft.Then I left with the birth of our first daughter because Bill and I both wanted to have a few kids.

I think the Americans need to understand that a lot of times the children are bored in school, and that is why they are not staying in.

Housework comes first, so girls often fall behind in school. Global statistics show that it's increasingly girls, not boys, who don't know how to read.

Our economies are built on the backs of all this unpaid labor that women do.

We also look at farming. Are we making sure that we're getting the latest seeds out to women so they can get a bigger yield off of their farms? A new type of seed that gets out to a man, let's say, that's drought resistant - because, of course, the rains are changing in Africa with climate change - if you don't put it in the hands of a woman, she won't necessarily get it. We look at breaking down all those barriers.

Women and girls face a whole host of issues. We start with health, so we work very deeply on maternal deaths, making sure that a mom doesn't die in childbirth, making sure that she has access, for instance, to AIDS medication.

Women are the centre of the family. It's the woman who decides what's eaten in the house, when to have the kids vaccinated; everything that has to do with the children's health revolves around her.